Out of Oz: The Final Volume in the Wicked Years (47 page)

“I cried so hard,” said Dorothy, “I looked like I’d thrown that bucket of water over myself.”

“And so the question is,” said Brrr, “what happened up there?
Did
Dorothy kil the Witch? Either on purpose or by accident? Al any of us know about the matter is that the Witch is done with. She’s gone.

But was she kiled?”

The room fel silent. Dame Fegg turned to Dorothy and so did Temper Bailey. Several hundred Munchkinlanders paused in their knitting or their munching of smal round breakfast pastries. The Chimpanzees held their fans stil.

“I shal remind you that you are under oath to answer honestly,” murmured Lord Nipp, almost as if afraid to break the spel of the question.

Dorothy put her face in her hands, a sloppy gesture given the length of her sleeves. When she lifted her teary cheeks, her upper lip was creamy with mucus; it looked as if she had applied a depilatory unguent. “I believe in taking responsibility for what happens,” she admitted. “I believed it six years ago, and that’s why I went to Kiamo Ko, to confess my part in the death of Nessarose Thropp. And I confess my part in the death of Elphaba Thropp too, to the extent I can be sure that it happened. But when I threw a bucket of water at the Witch, to save her from burning to death in her black skirts, what happened was a huge plume of smoke and a sizzle, as of fatback on a griddle, and the Witch colapsed amid the drapes of her skirts and the bilows of smoke. The acrid stench and the burning in my eyes made me turn away, and I vomited in terror and surprise, and when I looked back—wel, she was gone.”

“Kiled,” said Fegg.

“Gone,” said Dorothy.

“Is that the same thing?”

“Who can say?”

“Very good question,” said Temper Bailey. “Who can say? Were there witnesses?”

“Only Toto, and he used to be the strong silent type,” said Dorothy.

“Oh, now, let’s not start that sniffling again,” scoffed Fegg.

“The Witch’s old Nanny finaly made it up the stairs, and she swept me away while she cleaned up,” said Dorothy. “I never went up there again, and I never examined the scene of the death. I was a witness at her disappearance—and, sure, maybe it was a death. But wouldn’t there have been a corpse?”

“Of course there was a corpse,” snorted Dame Fegg. “You’ve proven yourself to be an unreliable witness any number of times. In your glee and relief you just didn’t check, or you’re pretending not to have checked.”

The room seemed to rock a little; maybe it was the heat, or maybe that Dorothy carried personal earthquakes with her to deploy at wil. Brrr sat up straight. Temper Bailey emitted a series of smal
who-who-whos
, but whether that was a stutter or an admission in Owlish that he was not wise enough for this particular job was hard to say.

“Before you kil again,” said Dame Fegg, “I wil see you put to death.”

Lord Nipp had to pound his gavel repeatedly. When silence returned at last, he caled a halt in the proceedings for two days. He made the suggestion that Animals should be invited to hear the final assessments and the judgment of Dorothy, and Munchkinlander farmers should roundly encourage their lodgers and farmhands to show some civic spirit and witness the conclusion of the trial. After al, a cow had been kiled in the Glikkus. There was such a thing as solidarity.

8.

Why the adjournment? From the point of view of the prosecution, it seemed to Brrr a clumsy move. The hiatus might alow that rumor—that Elphaba was somehow stil alive—to gain weight and sway public opinion in Dorothy’s favor. Mister Mikko agreed and concluded that Nipp
must
have a sound reason for delaying. Might they be trying to dig up a witness, somewhere, someone who could confirm Elphaba’s death by revealing anything about the disposition of her corpse?

“Preposterous,” said Brrr. Who could it be? Back on that dreadful day, neither he nor Lir had been alowed up the stairs to the parapet where Elphaba had died. The only human souls who might give testimony about the scene of that tragedy were Dorothy herself and the Witch’s old Nanny, who had gone up after Dorothy had come down but who had refused Lir access. Brrr had assumed it was out of kindness; Lir had, after al, been a mere fourteen years old. And a young fourteen at that.

Could Elphaba’s old Nanny have been capable of a deceit of any magnitude? Concealing the Witch?… Brrr thought not. Even then Nanny had been stunningly unmoored from reality. Were she stil alive, she’d be over a hundred years old now. At any rate, Kiamo Ko was a thousand-some miles away any route you took. They wouldn’t be putting Nanny or her ghost on the witness stand.

Then, he wondered, what about Chistery? The chief of the flying monkeys? As far as Brrr knew, Chistery was an anomaly in Oz. He’d begun life as an animal incapable of language, and yet he had managed to learn it, thanks to Elphaba’s ministrations and maybe to her magic. Brrr had no idea how old Chistery would be now, nor how long snow monkeys generaly lived. He asked Mister Mikko his opinion, but the Ape bared his false dentures at Brrr and refused to get into a discussion about it. “I don’t even know my own expected life span,” he snapped; “how could I possibly be conversant on the life span of an invented line like a flying monkey?”

Even if he were alive, Chistery would likely be too old to fly al those miles to speak in confirmation of the Witch’s death, decided Brrr. And an Animal’s testimony would carry only so much weight.

The evening before the trial was set to reopen, Mr. Boss said, “In the absence of any other clue about why Nippy Nipp Nipp adjourned for two days, I’ve been wondering if emissaries of La Mombey have been working to get information out of Dorothy now that she’s been threatened with execution.”

“Information about what?” asked his wife.

“Isn’t it obvious?” he said. “La Mombey must be as interested in locating the Grimmerie as the Emperor is. Maybe she thinks that only something as powerful as that book could have drawn Dorothy back to Oz, and that Dorothy knows something about its location. A threat of death might loosen her tongue.”

“Dorothy’s is one tongue that doesn’t need any more loosing,” said the Munchkinlander. But Brrr wondered if Mr. Boss had a point.

They made the mistake of walking back to their lodgings through the piazza outside Neale House. Flares had been set up so that the tradesmen could hammer together a kiosk of some sort. “They’re going to sel souvenirs that say THE JUDGMENT OF DOROTHY! Headbands or armbands,” guessed Little Daffy.

“They’re building her a little house she can ride back to Kansas,” said Mr. Boss.

They stopped joking then, as someone strung up a rope, and someone else tested the trapdoor. “They wouldn’t,” said Little Daffy, dabbing her eyes. “My own folk, coarsened so?” At A Stable Home, she ventured to ask Dame Hostile, “Do you think Lord Nipp wil order Dorothy to be hanged?”

“She’l swing like a bel, ding dong, they say,” replied the widow. “And by the way, I’m giving notice to you lot. When you booked in, you concealed your association with that Dorothy. So I want you to clear out tomorrow. I don’t need this house to get a reputation for attracting lowlife.”

“But I’m a Munchkinlander!” cried Little Daffy.

“That’s pretty low,” said the dwarf, “though I’m not one to talk.”

“I’m retiring,” said the chatelaine. “I can’t talk to you anymore.”

“We didn’t do anything to you,” said Little Daffy. “I know my manners. We clean up after ourselves. Look, I’l bake you a coffee bread for the morning.” She was almost beside herself, to be treated this way by her own kind.

The only response from upstairs was a slammed door.

Brrr had had enough. He repaired to his chamber, from where he could hear the distant sound of hammering and cheering half the night, as the laborers tested and retested their equipment.

Regardless of the reasons for the postponement, when the trial reconvened Neale House was even more crowded the next day. A thousand Munchkinlanders surrounded the building and spiled into the square by the front doors. The Animals that Munchkin farmers had cajoled or browbeat into joining them were largely of the junior variety—kits, cubs, pups in training harness. They were escorted by Ewes and Dames, in hooded expressions and the occasional going-to-town bonnet. The human factor in the crowd snickered and occasionaly nickered. Even a jaded old Goat with a beard on her chin and a wen on her rump commanded little respect in a crowd of beer-barrel farmers.

“So far in this picture-pretty town, my size and presence has seemed more than enough to alow me to pass through any crowd,” murmured Brrr to the dwarf and his wife. “But the Munchkinlanders seem to be gigantic in menace, or is that just me?”

Mister Mikko said, “I’m turning back. This atmosphere reminds me too much of the crowds that gathered to hear about the Wizard’s Animal Adverse laws. I can wait til tonight to hear what develops. And if I happen to die today of hexus of the plexus or bonkus of the konkus, don’t think I go unwilingly. It’s been a long rocky life, with plenty of possibility but too much human ugliness.” The room was filed to the rafters, literaly, since Munchkinlanders sat straddling the beams. The atmosphere had gone grave. Nipp cleared his throat and took sips of water and cleared his throat again before harrumphing, “Due to circumstances on the international front, I’ve been required to speed up the trial. In the absence of further witnesses this morning, I’m going to ask the advocates to present their final arguments. I wil then charge the jury with making a judgment of Dorothy Gale: guilty as charged or innocent of some or al charges. I retain to myself the privilege of listening to the jury’s advice and determining if it is sound. May I remind you al that the final arbitration of justice remains in the hands of the magistrate. Me. Dame Fegg, you may begin.” The prosecutor, clearly, had been briefed about the change in calendar. She’d come cloaked in some sort of dark academic robe that set off her iron braids, this morning coiled and pinned to each temple with treacherous-looking hair swizzlers. In a voice rounded with theatrical tones, perhaps the better to carry out the windows, she caled Dorothy to the chair for a final time.

The defendant emerged from belowstairs in the usual manner. No one lent a hand, but at least for her final turn on the stand she’d been alowed to appear in her own clothes, an ensemble that had no origin in Oz—a blue velvet skirt with shiny black jet piping at the hem that, at intervals, looped waistward in hand-stitched arabesques. Cut to the midcalf and girdled with a wide stomacher, it cinched a white linen blouse with mutton sleeves. A toque filigreed with spiky feathers and fake linen roses in blue and silver perched at a drunken angle upon her head. She clutched her gloved hands repeatedly as if in her distress she were about to burst into song.

“Lord Nipp,” began Dame Fegg. “Counsel Bailey. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Ladies and gentlemen of the galery and beyond. Indeed, ladies and gentlemen of history: I address you al.” Dorothy gave a little cough. “Yes, Miss Dorothy, I address you too,” said Dame Fegg in exaggerated courtesy, the first nasty giggle of the morning. Brrr roled his eyes at Little Daffy and Mr. Boss.

“This trial has not taken so long that we need to review point by point what’s been put before us already. I shal therefore make a cursory summary for the sake of the record. I put it to the jury that Dorothy Gale is guilty as charged of the murder of Nessarose Thropp and Elphaba Thropp. Whether she is also guilty of the murder of that cow in the Glikkus is not our concern this morning.”

“No one said it was a talking Cow,” said Dorothy. “But I’ve kind of noticed you don’t always pay attention to that distinction.”

“Ooooh,” said the humans in the crowd, as if this were a point in a debating tourney. Brrr couldn’t tel if they approved, generaly, or if Dorothy was hitting too close to home. The Animals, he noticed, were silent, even stiff in their composure.

“I believe we’ve established that, some eighteen years ago, the colapse of Miss Dorothy’s domicile upon Nessarose, the Eminent Thropp and governor of Munchkinland, indisputably resulted in her death.

Though known at the time as the Wicked Witch of the East, Nessarose is honored for her role in launching Munchkinland independence. Therefore Dorothy Gale is guilty of slaying the mother of our country.

Our dear Munchkinland.”

“Here comes the dump,” murmured Mr. Boss to Brrr. “I can smel it.”

Dame Fegg left the circular plinth from which she had conducted most of her examination. “We are a smal people,” she said. “Before most of us were born, the Ozma Regent, Pastorius, began the job of strangling our native independence by renaming Nubbly Meadows in southern Gilikin as the Emerald City. Pastorius planned the early stages of what would become the Yelow Brick Road. His work, however innocently meant, was ready for exploitation by the Wizard of Oz. Until Nessarose Thropp inherited the mantle of Eminence that was rejected by her sister Elphaba, we were in thral to the powers of what is now caled Loyal Oz. So the recent history of Munchkinland—the history into which many of us were born—casts us most often as the handmaiden of the rich, the laborer in the field, the servant under the stairs, the midget comedy troupe.”

The room had gone fuly silent, humans and Animals alike.

“Smal, yes,” said Dame Fegg, reclaiming her dais now for emphasis and striking a pose, “smal, but not insignificant. We accept from our forebears the stewardship of our dear Munchkinland. The bones of our ancestors herringbone the soil we plow. The land they tiled, the views they cherished, are ours. We shal never alow any invader, either Dorothy Gale or the Emerald City Messiars at Haugaard’s Keep, to abuse our liberty and to confiscate our sacred trust of land. From the slopes of the Scalps to the north, where the Glikkuns stil dig for emeralds…” She paused to drag out a handkerchief, giving Mr. Boss a chance to mutter, “Technicaly the Glikkus isn’t Munchkinland; this lot is as blind to native borders as anyone else.” She continued, “… to the brave little hamlets perched on the edge of the great desert to the east—to the lonely, sere sweeps of the Hardings and the Cloth Hils that divide us from soggy Quadling Country, and over, yes, to Restwater! to Restwater, damn it! which shal
not
remain in the greedy grasp of the invaders, but shal return rightfuly to those who cherish it most!”